HP foresees bright future for online storage in India

Online storage entails storing or backing up data over the Internet and HP is one of the players in this space. Li Qingqiao is the product marketing manager and strategist for HP StorageWorks Division worldwide.

He manages the HP SAN infrastructure products, HP Enterprise Virtual Array products and oversees all those products' life cycle management. In an interview with Pragati Simlote of CyberMedia News, he talks about online storage and how its market is evolving.

What is online storage?



Storing or backing up data over the Internet is online storage. There are four basic types of online storage - simple local disks, dedicated arrays, shared arrays and network-attached storage (NAS). And there are also four basic modes in which storage can operate: online, near online, backup and archive.

How has storage changed with time?



Storage has become more intelligent with time. I feel that both online and nearline storage will co-exist because online storage is still expensive. Also nearline offers better protection of data as users can remove the data outside of the box. Online couldn't do that, as data has to remain online.

Online and nearline are getting developed together. Companies can back up data into nearline. For archiving, they can keep older data on nearline devices, as it is cheaper and keep an index and keep the current data online for faster access.

What kind of product portfolio does HP have in online storage?



We have three major product lines in this category — right from entry level to the very high end.

Targeted at large enterprises, XP Disk Array Systems have storage capacity starting from several hundred GB to several hundred petabytes. For mid-range and enterprise-class environments, HP has the Enterprise Virtual Array Systems. These systems are easy to use and manage and the storage can go up to the TB level. The low-end solutions are called Modular Smart Array (MSA) Systems. These are targeted at entry-level businesses, departmental, and branch office customers. For a mid range solution, the initial investment is close to $20,000for 1 TB of storage.

What are the various segments looking at while going in for online storage?



Mid range companies are usually looking for scalability, ease of use, security, availability and performance. They want to start small and eventually grow big and EVA enterprise virtual array caters to this area.

Large enterprises need super big, fast and reliable data storage, while the smaller companies focus on cost of ownership at each level. Ease of use and manage is the key for smaller companies.

What kind of growth are you expecting in the online storage market in India?



I foresee a huge usage growth for online storage in India. The driving force for this growth include increasing digital information, increasing demand for digital information and need for storing more digital information than before and also for a longer duration. In India, adding the population factor to the above factors, it makes a great market opportunity for us. For e.g. with STD @ Re 1 becoming a reality, it would add more telecom customers thereby increasing the demand for storage.

India is a very important market for HP online storage and we plan to target verticals such as telecom, banking and SMBs. SMBs are important as today they maybe small but tomorrow they can be big. We don't want to ignore them and want to grow along with them.

What kind of growth has the storage segment in HP seen?



Our enterprise storage is the shining star within HP. US is the number one market in storage for HP followed by North America and then APAC. Seeing the growth in APAC, it is just a matter of time it could become number 2 and even occupy the number 1 slot eventually.

What are you plans for the APAC market?



APAC is very important market for us and we see more and more growth in APAC along with more and more unique requirement coming in from this region. We plan to leverage local resource and develop and design products specifically for APAC — developed by the local team in collaboration with the US team.

In future, I expect to see more and more products being developed specifically for APAC region. We could even develop products for a specific country and even for one industry within a country.